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Sauce

Grape Catsup

A sweet grape-based condiment made by stewing grapes, straining, and simmering with sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pulp

  1. Stew the grapes over a slow fire until soft.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Season and finish

  1. Add sugar, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, pepper, salt, and vinegar.

  2. Boil until slightly thickened.

  3. Bottle the catsup.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the fruit pulp that forms the body and base flavour of the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps the sauce thicken and keep.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic spice that gives the ketchup its characteristic flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until slightly thickened. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar and pulp, which thickens the sauce. Boiling too little leaves it runny and less stable, while boiling too long can make it stiff or scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, allspice, clove, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, allspice, clove, pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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